Mastodon (Not the Band) Classic or Dud

So is this thing in the vein of IRC, where you'll only see people if they join the same instance/server as you? That seems quite the opposite of what social media is, in some ways.

Or can you be on multiple servers?

lol i would absolutely follow ned anywhere . . . apart from spaceballs, which is just awful

I'm at https://mastodon.online/@quartzcity

can we start a mastadon ILX? haha.

Ha. Not my server! I just needed an entry point.

Basically as I am sensing it now, to answer Trayce’s question — you can talk internally on your server but you can also basically talk to anyone on another server if that server doesn’t block yours for any reason. And basically as you follow people you create your equivalent of a Twitter feed, and there are list options etc. And you can set your posts to public or private. So it’s nowhere near as easy an entry as Twitter but once you get the hang of it it functions as it in practical terms. Seems worth a go.

can we start a mastadon ILX? haha.

Yeah are they like minecraft or dischord servers - ie you have to actually have physical server space? I can seeyou have to moderate, which sounds unfun. I dunno - Masto looks very small. I've known about it for years but the only people I knew who ever bleated about it were hackers/devs and assorted nerd ne'er do wells.

its a bunch of connected fiefdoms instead of a dictatorship

surely we have a baron(ess) among us

so to speak

I like the old school FidoNet-powered-by-gnutella feel of the place.

Let’s go

i've been on mastodon on and off since 2017 (it was mentioned somewhere and i was curious): in 2018 there was a little mini-excursion there among three overlapping social circles i'm in, i forget even why (tho it was partly triggered by ppl that some of us followed being twitter-banned) -- it was a little nine-day wonder and then faded (the accounts in question crept back onto twitter w/new names and thrived, slightly less abrasively)

since then had two instances die under me (both small)

• the first i'd picked totally randomly, it was extremely japanese which made my federated experience soothing (i read no japanese) and its mod one day decided he didn't want to mod any more and kicked everyone off (he gave plenty of warning and moving between instances is p easy)
• the second i'd picked bcz a tiwtter-exile i enjoy following wz pals w/its mod and it had an entertaining shitposty vibe; i then went on mastadon hiatus for a long time and when i returned this second instance had vanished (i think there was beef involved? the tale is probably on reddit somewhere)
• so then i signed up a second time, this time to mastodon.social, so that i'd have some kind of microblogging bolthole when elon musk got round to destroying twitter 4 years later as i knew he always would (mastodon.social is the default instance, large and mainstream, headed by mastodon founder eugen aka gargron, and currently down a lot as it handles many many flustered sign-ups)

— mastodon is larger than two weeks ago but it is still very very small and very curiously shaped: it lacks several features dear to journalists and also to harassers which will be combination aggravation and relief
— twitter's sense of centrality was of course a vasr value but as a practical unchallenged fact it is always going to be wildly contested; as a straight-forward quality it was never long for this world and eventually came apart (which is basic politics: the ineluctable fact of empires is that they die)
— it is still somewhat flimsy (cf the outages plus eugen is just one person and can't move at speed) and also somewhat leaky i believe (my feeling abt strangers reading my DMs is that since they're probably even more annoying than my public posts tweets and toots THEY'RE WELCOME HAHA… but i understand many have actual reasons for minding abt privacy and so on) (like centrality, privacy is an ideal verging on a myth, but it's not a bad myth after all)

(FB is of course much bigger but even b4 u start in on its many other flaws it's also massively pre-siloed -- yes it's very centralised as a corproate entity but users have no sense of or access to that centrality)

er so anyway dubdobdee at mastodon dot social, as long as it can be accessed i will never quit any platform, least of all ilx or indeed twitter

https://media.tenor.com/U5RwBfkG6t8AAAAM/elmo-flames.gif

in conclusion and tl;dr i arrived somewhere on the internet before ned so i win

I joined mastodon.lol sever but for the last couple of days the app just says 503 so either the server has busted or Mastodon lol?

I will probably delete the account and try again

mastodon.social has been up and down ftb large recent influx, i *think* the decentralised servers means that mastodon as a whole chugs on even when there's local outage so yes, maybe try another server aka instance (call it by its name)

it's *possible* that someone calling their server "lol" did not have a serious purpose to their project

I only joined because it was called that. Joke is on me.

When I go on account settings it does "Server upgrades, check back later <3".

Anyway, this looks like a good thread on it

Apparently there is a crossposter you can use.

To mirror my tweets to Mastodon, I use this cross-poster. Others are also available. I have it set to mirror all my Tweets except replies.

If I don't feel a Tweet was RIGHT for mastodon, i just pop over quickly and delete it after posting it here. Simples https://t.co/eTXBJFgczo

— John Bull (@garius) November 5, 2022

Once I got through the basics of it it all seems pretty reasonable enough. The mobile app version is quite nicely designed.

Useful general thread here (though speaking from a high follower standpoint) -- also notes how you can make Mastodon look like Tweetdeck, which suits me for sure.

Right. As a heavy tweeter/content creator who is now maintaining BOTH a Twitter and Mastodon presence, here is a short guide to what I have set up, how to do it and lessons I've learned, for others.

TLDR: It's been WAY less hassle than I expected thanks to tips from followers /1

— John Bull (@garius) November 5, 2022

Although that may be the same thread featured above! Well, repetition, etc.

I'm on the waitlist for mastadon.social, but yeah it would be cool if we could figure out how to get an ILX mastadon server; though, perhaps that would just be redundant?

Not really -- since you can move your accounts between servers as desired, having some sort of ILX server even as a stopgap might not hurt.

i meant redundant with ILX itself.

I joined and am hoping to a return to the simpler/more enjoyable days of Tumblr communities.

@sctttn✧✧✧@ms✧✧✧.soc✧✧✧

Try it as a URL!

Weird formatting there!

https://mstdn.social/@sctttnnnt

I don't get it at all, but I am here https://mstdn.social/@akmonday

@lathamgr✧✧✧@ravenat✧✧✧.c✧✧✧

that's right , I ravve

what the hell - diamonds??

@lathamgr✧✧✧@ravenat✧✧✧.c✧✧✧

@lathamgr✧✧✧@ravenat✧✧✧.c✧✧✧

please lord help

v

https://ravenation.club/web/@lathamgreen

ilx has disguised emails for like 15 years dude, write it out like i did

at lathamgreen at whichever dot whatever

great, lathamgreen is now the only person I am following on mastadon. I hope lathamgreen will not be pushing me disinformatioons.

u can say yes to my pending friend request and then follow me if u like :D

or not no pressure

I didn't get one (if that was directed at me). One thing I don't quite get: on mastadon.social, if I search for @quartzcity or @mrnedrick, I see your profiles aand am able to follow you. but this doesn't seem to be generally the case; for instance, tried to follow Damon K. but he's on a different instance entirely but I can't seem to do that without also having an account on that mastadon server? maybe I'm doing this incorrectly. we'll see how long I stay interested, I give it two days.

tried to find people but doesn't seem to work. looks very unlikely that I'll ever use it anyway, seems like a bit too much of a commitment to have a new social media app. anyway https://mastodon.world/@centuriesofsound

I’m on there - @Jelbu✧✧✧@m✧✧.t✧

It works for like 10 minutes of every hour as far as I can tell

Jelbugle mas to

yes sorry, this is me mark s (dubdobdee) talking to you akm (akmonday)

i'm in mastodon social, which may or may not be the same server as mstdn social (probably not the same, which might "explain" the non-connection)

it's telling me follow request is pending approval at the moment -- i know it sometimes takes time to clear (especially at the moment with lots of new ppl joining)

you dfon't need to have an account in more than one server to follow accounts in other servers, but with some inter-server hook-ups it is a bit more intricate (and apparently counter-intuitive, i remember having to puzzle it out when i first joined but can't now recall what the error was that i was making)

(there are actually also some servers which have entirely blocked other servers but that's unlikeley to be an issue for anywhere ppl are currently moving into)

The only alternative to Twitter is the Statscock

I got onto the app but just getting 503 errors

I mean, I have ILX, Facebook, a Viber account, Reddit, a twitter I dont use, an IG I dont use, I still have my livejournal ffs, and I have a blog that I never update.

Fuck am I going to do with more crap to log into. Personally I wish everyone'd start up a subreddit to sit and chat in, but I know thats never gonna happen.

I signed up for a Mastodon account with relative ease, but now that I'm on there have no idea what to do. For me, it suffers from the same flaw as Instagram: you can only search by hashtags. So trying to find interesting accounts to follow by just typing in various artists or writers or bands is impossible.

Me, I'm all for a return to Usenet.

it's funny how nobody is talking about going to Facebook even as a joke

— blaine capatch (@blainecapatch) November 5, 2022

LOL thats because everyone who is on twitter left FB to go there. Its the only reason I even have a twitter - to keep up with a few close friends who straight up do not post anything anywhere else.

xp I'm totally prepared to go back to store-and-forward in case the Internet segments back into national/local networks.

BBS style!

Bring on ilx.i-love-everything and ilx.i-love-music!

A distinct plus

I only wish more people I know were using it!

People don't want to log off.

Mastodon is civil, respectful, supportive, and terminally boring. It lacks jouissance - the horrible but compelling excesses which drag us back here day after day.

— Tom O'Shea (@DrTomOShea) January 12, 2023

"that's why YOU say Doctor o shay!" - Local Merchant

yeah, enjoying the slower more laid-back aspect of Mastodon, I'm actually considering posting some stuff on there (something I don't do on twitter, where it just seems like any comment I would make would just get lost immediately).

I'm a bit short on free time atm, but I was looking at how to integrate ILX w/ActivityPub. It doesn't seem like a perfect fit, tbh, but it's interesting to think about. I'd be happy to partner with someone who knows how to set up a Mastodon instance as well so long as I never have to say toot

also I know why people are precious about it, but I really really wish the fediverse had search

"It’s also facing new competition from established names: Meta has said it’s working on its own decentralized social network, code-named P92, which will reportedly connect to ActivityPub. And Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey is getting ready to unveil Bluesky, a decentralized social media app that will come with a new protocol of its own."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/18/mastodon-users-twitter-elon-musk-social-media

Promising:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2023/05/a-new-onboarding-experience-on-mastodon/

Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey is getting ready to unveil Bluesky, a decentralized social media app that will come with a new protocol of its own.

I was wondering what had happened to stevem

i always said stevem had a protocol all his own, nice to see it confirmed

Although I have been lukewarm about Mastodon so far, it did enable me to purchase a piece of musical gear this evening for which I've been hunting around for a while.

Gave up on mastodon after the server I picked to stump up on just disappeared one day taking my account with it.

It's a party 24/7 over at ravenation.club

i haven't used any of these apps but mastodon strikes me as sort of being the dc++ to twitter's napster

mind you i never used dc++ either

I have no idea what dc++ is but you're probably right

So anyone signing up/coming back over or are you all friends of Jack's now? I don't think I will ever sign up for bsky, the slower pace of life on Mastodon is suiting me nicely.

I'm no friend of Jack. I have the occasional flash of "should I get an account there so no one else gets the user name I use everywhere on the internet?" but that's a key motivator in geting you to join a social media site anyway, right?

I had some problems with the instance I was on so I jumped to one of the big servers. I miss the previous one - it was Los Angeles-themed which made the Local timeline worth checking out. Anyway, I'm here now: https://mas.to/@quartzcity

i moved my bots over, just in time, but haven't picked a server for my main account yet.

What was the LA themed server?

https://onewilshire.la - named after the giant data center downtown.

So anyone signing up/coming back over or are you all friends of Jack's now? I don't think I will ever sign up for bsky, the slower pace of life on Mastodon is suiting me nicely.

― emil.y, Saturday, 1 July 2023 bookmarkflaglink

The pace on there is a full stop. Cannot figure it out. I shouldn't have to either.

Ideally, it's the place.

I posted this on another thread but the main thing I've learnt about finding interesting things on Mastodon is to use and follow hashtags. I never wanted to do this on twitter because there were too many aggressive randos, but Mastodon is smaller and more peaceful, so when I want to potentially be part of a larger conversation, I can use hashtags confidently. Following hashtags puts posts containing them directly in your feed, so choosing those well is essential.

I also think joining an instance that is generally themed around a topic you find interesting is a good idea, so you can browse local to find stuff. I loved .lol b/c it was queer and antifascist. The one I'm on now is specifically LGBTQ+ but I feel like it's less interesting to me w/o the explicitly political side. There's also the worry with facebook moving in about who federates with them and what that means. I might end up moving instances again, which is, to be honest, a massive pain in the arse.

I do see fewer entertaining shitposts and memes on Mastodon, which is why I've finally joined tumblr as well, ha!

I'm on .lol but I've not logged in months. Now I get 404

Oh, ha, you have been away! .lol closed down, it was just one guy running it and the first twitter influx got too much for him to handle. That is a big issue with the system - you don't want to go for a big instance for a variety of reasons but the smaller ones will always have the risk of folding.

I feel like I'm becoming the Mastodon proselytiser over here, but there are definitely issues with it. I'd like to see more people join and give it a proper try rather than automatically going to bluesky, but I think part of my enjoyment of Mastodon is that I genuinely want a smaller space now, and for lots of people that isn't what they want at all.

uh

https://www.neowin.net/news/admin-of-an-anarchist-mastodon-server-raided-by-fbi-insecure-user-data-gets-seized/

Gotta OPSEC yr instances.

"Oh, ha, you have been away! .lol closed down, it was just one guy running it and the first twitter influx got too much for him to handle."

Ah ok so I gotta rejoin under another instance. Will look to doing this. Any recommendations?

mas.to has been smooth sailing the whole time.

Thanks, will look

Done. That's a smoking fast server!! So I think I was really unlucky last time. We'll see.

Actually want to post there

I am @✧✧@lgbt✧✧✧.sp✧✧✧ if anyone wants to follow my sporadic posts about music and nonsense (including far too many posts about old Eurovisions, I apologise).

Argh, forgot about the redactions - EK is the first bit. lgbtqia.space is the second bit.

We're following each other there, I think?

Yep, we are.

is there a way to find bands easy on this thing

Following this on Mastodon.

Prime Numbers bot won't be tweeting anymore due to Twitter's API and policy changes. The bot lost API access a few days ago, and won't be coming back, but it lives on in a few different places:

web/rss: https://t.co/ujQjfo0AMA
mastodon: https://t.co/FJhv5cV0PJ

— Prime Numbers (@_primes_) July 5, 2023

currently relearning the process of finding people and adding them to a list i have set up : not the easiest of processes to say the least.

is there a way to find bands easy on this thing

If they're on there, you should be able to search for the name of the band and unless they've given themselves a comedy username they'll come up. I don't think bands make themselves accounts there as a matter of course, though, so you might not have much luck unless you're sure they're there already. You also can't search for text within posts so you can't just look for any reference to the band (unless it's a hashtag).

If you're just looking for bands who are on there and to maybe discover something new, there are two options:

1) browse the music servers from joinmastodon.org/servers. See if there's anything you like the look of and then browse their local timeline. For example, https://synthwave.social/public/local.

2) search for hashtags, like #DIY or #ElectronicMusic or #BlackMetal or whatever. You can follow those hashtags to get new posts about them straight in your feed and keep an eye on anyone new posting about the topic.

back into the swing of things now.
however, i clearly need to use hashtags more.

Can someone familiar with the "fediverse" answer a basic question? (I've used Mastodon a little while, but still don't understand some of the underpinnnings.) When it comes to these other platforms that use ActivityPub to talk to each other... how do they actually interact? Like, when I search for a hashtag on Mastodon, should I also theoretically be seeing posts using that hashtag on "Akkoma" and all the others? Or is there more to it? Thx